Douyin’s food delivery operation expands footprint fivefold to cover 30 major Chinese cities in competition with Meituan

The Chinese version of TikTok is expanding to 24 new markets including Shenzhen and Tianjin to capture a larger slice of China’s lucrative food delivery pie

The aggressive expansion brings owner ByteDance up against industry giant Meituan, which has more than four times as many merchants on its platform

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Delivery riders for Ele.me, in blue, and Meituan, yellow, seen in Beijing on April 11, 2018. ByteDance’s Douyin entered the highly competitive market last year, and it has contracted with Ele.me, among others, to deliver meals ordered on its platform. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:30pm, 12 Sep 2023Updated: 12:49pm, 13 Sep 2023

ByteDance’s viral video app Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, is making one of its most aggressive pushes to expand its delivery service in a bid to compete against industry powerhouse Meituan.

The platform known for its short video offerings, which has slowly crept into “super app” territory with many different services, will expand its food delivery business to 24 new cities, including major markets such as Shenzhen, Tianjin, southeast of Beijing, and Chongqing, in southwestern China.

Douyin is contracting with third-party regional vendors to “meet delivery demands from merchants and strengthen regional operational and marking capabilities”, the company said in a notice published on Monday to the website of its local services business. Douyin struck a deal last year with delivery firms including SF Express’ intracity delivery platform SFTC, JD.com’s Dada and Alibaba Group Holding’s Ele.me to deliver meals sold through its platform.

The number of new cities is four times more than where it was already operating, bringing Douyin food deliveries to a total of 30 major cities. When complete, the expansion will cover 70 per cent of Chinese provincial capitals, including Shenyang, Shijiazhuang, Jinan and Hefei.

Douyin has been planning for the expansion for much of this year, with representatives saying in February that the company would be offering food delivery in more cities than just Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu.

Still, Douyin remains a much smaller player in this space compared with Meituan and Ele.me, whose owner Alibaba also owns the Post. The expansion push may have a limited short-term impact on China’s larger food delivery platforms, according to Zhuang Shuai, founder and chief analyst of market consultancy Bailian. Meituan’s main edge, he said, is its large network of riders and merchant partners.

As the largest on-demand delivery service provider in China, Meituan had 6.24 million food delivery riders and over 9.3 million merchants on its platform last year, according to the company. By comparison, Douyin said it had 2 million merchant partners as of April.